postlaestadianrevival

After leaving a Laestadian church, how did you go about finding another church to belong to? What were your challenges? What were you looking for? Did you have trust issues? How long did it take to feel like you really fit in? Where did you "land" and how long have you been there?

My wife and I left the LLC about 14 years ago. We are currently in our third church. I used to listen to R.C. Sproul on the radio, which is what got me to really start doubting LLC doctrine. At the end of his show there was a little spot where a local Orthodox Presbyterian pastor welcomed those who enjoyed the teachings of R.C. to visit his church, which we did. After sharing with him our story, he offered to teach us biblical Christian doctrine and we accepted. For over a year he met with my family and a couple of others who had left the church at the same time. It was amazing how he labored to teach us what was right and what was wrong with Laestadianism. We attended his church for a couple of years. It was comfortable to us; piano and hymns for worship, traditional style everything else. As we grew in our faith, we longed for something with more contemporary style and we went to a non denominational church for 6 years. We became members there and served and in general loved it. Six years ago I was asked by another member of this church if I would join him in planting a church. We and a dozen other people did and now I serve as one of 5 pastors at Damascus Road Church in Marysville, WA.

There are a lot of churches out there. Some are great, some are ok and many are bad. You have to have some idea of what you are looking for. Martin Luther and the other reformers of the 16th century said that the true church was where 1. the gospel is preached faithfully 2. the sacraments are administered according to God's word and 3. where unrepentant sinners are disciplined according to Matt. 18: 15-20.

I have found that what is called reformed theology is the most biblical. It's more closely associated with the reformer John Calvin than Luther. I could go on but am out of time. I am certainly available to help anyone leaving the llc to find another faithful Jesus loving church.

I felt a little lost & didn't know which kind of church to seek out when I left. I prayed that God would show me a church I could attend that would actually teach the Bible clearly and correctly. I saw an announcement in the paper about a Baptist church that was sponsoring a pastor from Lebanon who was going to tell about Biblical prophecies concerning Lebanon. That sounded interesting, so my daughter & I went and found it to be a small church with a warm, welcoming, loving congregation. The pastor was just beginning a series on The Revelation, which I was thrilled to attend. We became regular attenders there, but I never joined that church. I still had a lot of my rigid ideas from my years in Laestadianism--like "the KJV Bible is the only accurate one" and a host of understandings of the Bible that I didn't know were wrong. But I learned to trust Christians that weren't raised like I was, and to see them in a different light than I had viewed them before.

After a couple of years there, I knew I had to move to another church where my daughter would have more companionship, so again I prayed that God would show me where to go. He put the name of a church on my mind that I had never thought about before, and when I called to ask for information about it, I was thrilled to find out that they had an AWANA program (a sort of Bible club for kids that encourages them to memorize Scripture, etc.), which I had been looking for for my daughter. This was another Baptist church which provided a real time of learning and growth for me. We had great Bible studies and learned so much about the Lord Jesus Christ.

After several years, a group of us from the church started a special ministry of our own and left that church. I attended many different churches for several more years--sort of floundering around & not getting any clear direction from God-- until I finally became a member of another small Baptist church, where I finally felt really at home. Our Pastor teaches through books of the Bible in his sermons, and we have Sunday School for all ages, as well as various Bible Studies all through the year. We do a lot of outreach to the community to show the love of Jesus Christ as well as offer the gospel message of Jesus' saving grace. We support a mission in Guatemala and church members have made some trips there. Of course, we also support the missionaries of the Southern Baptist Association.